


Siren Sphere

by Archangel_Beth



Series: Borg of Star Trek Online [3]
Category: Star Trek Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:13:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 16,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel_Beth/pseuds/Archangel_Beth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the <i>Zdenia</i> sends a distress call, ex-Borg "sisters" Eight of Thirty (human) and Ten of Thirty (Romulan) are the ones who respond. And when they discover a Borg sphere has made off with the <i>Zdenia</i>'s captain...</p>
<p>Desperate times call for desperate measures.</p>
<hr/>
<p>(If downloading as an epub, a cover is available at <a href="http://archangelbeth.deviantart.com/art/Siren-Sphere-567067282">http://archangelbeth.deviantart.com/art/Siren-Sphere-567067282</a> )</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

"Captain, I've picked up a recorded distress call. The _Zdenia_. They say they had an encounter with a Borg sphere. They managed to escape, but they're damaged and barely able to cloak. They give a heading for the sphere, and that they'll try to maintain cloaking after the message transmission."

Captain Eight of Thirty, a red-haired ex-Borg herself with charcoal sensors instead of eyes, said, "Send a transmission that the Federation ship _Comet_ is responding. How long before we get to the point of their message's origin?"

The helmsman looked at the coordinates the comm officer had sent. "Four hours, Captain. Three if we can push the engines."

"Push the engines a little," Eight said, cheerfully. Then she sent a text-only message, on a more private channel: _^Sister, why does **Zdenia** sound familiar?^_

The reply came back in letters across her eye-lens. _^Because I've told you about it. That's the flagship for the Republic-allied Remans. Obisek's ship.^_

Eight checked the sensors from the small terminal on the arm of her command chair. Out loud, she added, "Push the engines a little more. The _Kinaen_ is pushing theirs hard."

***

"There's a ship de-cloaking," Elisa reported. "Looks like the _Zdenia_."

"On screen," Eight chirped, and then blinked at the image. The _Zdenia_ was there, and mostly intact, but one of its wings now held a gaping hole. Forcefields glimmered within.

Then the image of a hooded Reman was superimposed over the ship's. " _Comet_ ," he said. "This is... Commander Rashna. Thank you for responding."

"Glad to help!" Eight said. "Do you need to beam over any injured, or should we start with repair supplies and people to help get you moving again?"

"We have injured, yes," Rashna said. "Medics, or bringing them to your sickbay, would be much appreciated."

Behind Eight, Elisa murmured, " _Kinaen_ de-cloaking."

The screen split, with Eight's white-haired Romulan sister on the other side. Without preamble, Ten said, "Commander, where's Khre'riov _Obisek_?"

"He... took a shuttle. The sphere had us in a tractor beam. He..." Rashna took a breath. "He said he would not allow any of us to do what he would not do himself."

Eight turned back to Elisa. "Do they have all their shuttles?" she asked quietly.

Elisa shook her head. "Looks like they've got an empty bay, Captain."

Eight turned back to the screen in time to see her sister's expression go Borg-cold. "You weren't able to beam him back?" Ten asked, almost monotone.

Rashna just shook his head.

"Understood," Ten said. "Eight, you can catch up when they're stable." She cut the communication.

Almost needlessly, Elisa reported, " _Kinaen_ 's cloaked. I think she's moving off on the sphere's heading, at her maximum warp."

With an internal sigh, Eight turned back, smiling in a friendly way. "Let's get your injured people over here and start patching you up, Commander."

*****

_Orchestral music swells. A planetary system fades into view. The Dainos-class warbird **Kinaen** appears at the lower left of the screen, soaring diagonally across and "up" away from the camera._

_...the Federation ship, the U.S.S. **Comet** , barrel-rolls past in an epic left-to-right photobomb, with accompanying shift in music mood._

_Cut to the bridge of the **Kinaen** , where Ten is facepalming with her left hand, head thrown back as she sprawls in her chair and giggles. Other members of her crew, in the background, pinch the bridges of their noses, shake their heads, or otherwise express "Yup, that happened" dismay._

_Run opening credits, amid scenes of:_

_• the **Comet** confronting enemy ships; it appears outnumbered, until the **Kinaen** de-cloaks above it._

_• Ten and Eight, back to back, swords drawn and left arms raised to toss off Science Kit effects, surrounded by traditional Borg who shuffle towards them. They look less beleaguered and more like they appreciate the number of available targets._

_• the **Comet** and **Kinaen** in combat, including both the Romulan warbird generating a black hole in a Singularity Jump -- and then the Federation ship adding a vortex. Caught in twin gravitational traps, enemy ships are sucked towards them both and/or being ripped apart. _

_• Eight, half-facepalming (has to miss the lens over one of her charcoal gray sensor-eyes) as Ten stands beside her with her white hair arranged to cover her Romulan widow's peak, and wearing a quasi-Federation outfit. In a faux-Vulcan pose, Ten cocks her head at her human sister._

_• And, of course, general pair-of-ships soaring around together and shots with their respective bridge crews. Eight has rather a lot of Liberated Borg on her crew._

_The last shot has the **Kinaen** diving down and out of the way as the **Comet** barrel-rolls back across the upper screen, right-to-left. _


	2. From the Ashes of Vengeance

"Borg sphere dead ahead, Commander," Tovan reported.

"What can we pick up without dropping cloak?" Ten asked. She hadn't shifted from her rigid posture in the captain's chair since they'd left the _Zdenia_. Her voice was still more monotone than it had been since she'd been brought to Virinat.

"Visuals, Commander. On screen?" Tovan asked, trying not to sound too concerned. He'd already been worried enough to quietly ask Satra to wander up to the bridge instead of staying in Sickbay. Then _Satra_ had slipped off for a while and come back with Teilia, their Reman second-shift engineer. Tovan wasn't entirely sure why, but if that was what the doctor thought appropriate...

"On screen," Ten said.

The image wasn't the best: enhancement could do only so much when something was that far out, unless one wanted to de-cloak and reveal one's presence. But it was clearly a Borg sphere.

Ten tapped one finger on the arm of her chair, three times, which was an almost reassuring motion after her extreme stillness. "Get us closer. As close as possible without them noticing us."

To her other side, Teilia said, "They must be damaged, to be going at that speed. We wouldn't be able to keep up without going to slipstream, otherwise."

Monotone, Ten said, "We need to keep them damaged until the _Comet_ can catch up, then."

"Yes, sir," came the murmurs from the others on the bridge, and that was the last anyone spoke as they slowly overtook the sphere, until finally they were close enough to see the crater in the sphere's otherwise Borg-perfect surface.

Ten stood and walked to between the two forward consoles, arms folded, and regarded the wounded sphere. After a moment, she extended a gloved hand, and her charcoal-gray nanoprobes emerged from her wrist and into the edge of a console. The viewscreen displayed annotations.

"He managed to impact the exterior propulsion systems on that side," she said tonelessly. "Until it heals itself, it's slower than we are, and may have weakened shields there as well. From visual data, I estimate it will take another twelve to twenty-four hours before the damage is repaired. It may regain shields in four."

"Can we take advantage of the hole, Commander?" Tovan asked.

She turned her head -- to look at him with her organic left eye instead of the Borg eyepiece on her right, to his relief. "We can. If we de-cloak, use the tachyon inversion beams to drain its shields further, and drop a heavy torpedo _exactly_ into that hole... It should at least slow their repairs enough for the _Comet_ to catch up. If the shield is weakened, and continues to be so, we may be able to exploit that with a combined well-placed singularity and vortex. Again, at the least, we should be able to harry it until one of our more heavily-armed ships can arrive."

Tovan frowned at the dark cavity on the sphere. "I can do it," he said. "Give me fifteen minutes to set up the torpedo, and if Nirel can have the inversion beam ready by then..."

"I can," the science officer said, turning to her console at the rear of the bridge.

"Then we shall," Ten said, retracting her nanoprobes from the console and stalking back to her chair. She sat, pressed a button, and said, "Red alert. We will be de-cloaking and engaging a Borg sphere in fifteen minutes. Once we've damaged it again, we will move out of immediate weapons range, re-cloak, and await the _Comet_ 's arrival."

It was usually _ambitious_ to say things like "move out of immediate weapons range" about a Borg ship of any sort -- but with a damaged one, it was plausible.

Ten sat rigidly for the entire fifteen minutes, like a drone in a regeneration chamber. Which, so far as Tovan knew, her chair was _not_.

He hadn't seen her so fixedly blank since they'd escaped Virinat, and there... she'd been more intense, more active. But then, she'd had more to do personally, what with cracking the lock-outs on the weapons and handling everything that Tovan couldn't, while the people they'd brought on their shuttle tried to figure out how to watch the engines.

Tovan knew better than to ask how much assimilation they'd left in that antique little warbird. He'd told her to do every bit of it, even if he hadn't said the word at the time, and he'd known what he was unleashing.

But now he was the one training the weapons precisely on the wound in the sphere's flank, and sending the instructions to make sure the torpedo was armed and overpowered and not going to be a dud. Twelve and some fraction of a minute later, he said, "Ready. Approach at half impulse, please."

At the science station, Nirel said, "Ready."

Teilia said, "Ready to de-cloak."

The helmswoman, Konratra, said, "Slowing to half impulse."

Ten said, "Computer, initiate ship-wide countdown. Three minutes to de-cloaking. Start."

The computer began murmuring quietly in the background, and a number popped up along the border of Tovan's console. He rested his hand on the edges.

_Two minutes._

_One minute._

_Half._ Tovan let his fingers hover above the console's surface.

 _Quarter._ Ten lifted her left hand.

 _Five._ She folded in her thumb.

 _Four._ Least finger folded in.

 _Three._ Third finger gone.

 _Two._ Middle finger folded.

 _One._ She made a fist.

"Now," Ten said, and dropped her fist.

("De-cloaking," said Telia.) They came out of cloak. ("Initiating inversion beam," said Nirel.) The tachyon inversion beam sprang out, and the computer-augmented representation of the Borg ship's shields cycled from indigo into yellow -- with a blood-green patch over the crater.

("Torpedo away," Tovan said.) The torpedo went right through it, dead center. The sphere _rocked_ on the screen.

Ten ordered, "Full impulse, evasive maneuvers. Get us out of range and cloak again. Singularity jump if we have the charge for it."

"Not yet, Captain," Teilia reported. "Cloak will be on line in twelve. Eleven..."

Beams lanced out from the sphere, making the _Kinaen_ shake in turn. But they were already out of tractor range, and at the edge of even Borg weapons range -- and it wasn't catching up fast enough to entrap them. Tovan queued up another torpedo from the rear launcher, and dropped some mines to hopefully slow the sphere down.

"Incoming Borg broadcast," Ten muttered to herself, and tapped the controls on her chair.

 _"--er your shields,"_ came the usual Borg statement, _"and prepare to be boarded."_

Tovan was about to ask if he should send another plasma torp back at the sphere for luck, but...

 _"You will be assimilated,"_ came from the speakers, in a rich velvet rumble that nearly overpowered the usual Borg chorus effect.

"Elements!" Satra said, and Teilia finished, "It's _Obisek!_ " The Reman woman added, "We're cloaking now."

Ten stood up abruptly. "Excuse me," she said. "I need to use an escape pod."

"What?" Tovan stared as she headed in the direction of the turbolift, then jumped up and lunged for her arm.

"Individuality is overrated," she said, leaning turbolift-wards.

Teilia hurried around and grabbed Ten's other arm. "No, no, and no," she said, in a voice that evoked childhood memories of being told _don't tease your little sister, Tovan._ The Reman continued, "You are absolutely _not_ running off back to the Collective. We don't have enough commanders!"

"Tovan can do it," Ten said, continuing to lean; she was heavier than she looked, which still surprised Tovan even though he should've been used to it by now. Behind, the chair speakers murmured indistinct Borgish orders.

"I don't want the command!" Tovan said quickly. (It was true; when it'd come down to which of them was in charge of that little antique warbird, he'd joked that he wasn't the one who'd sweet-talked it into operation, and then run off to get the lay of the land in the flotilla's improvised station-ship. _Ten_ had been the one who stayed and accepted orders and a place in the nascent Republic's fleet.) "I am very happy being First Officer!"

"I'm sure you'd do a good job," Ten said -- and he realized, thankfully, she was still using pronouns for herself and not "this drone."

"I'm sure I don't want to find out!" he said. "What's got into you?"

Behind them, Satra shut off the broadcast. Ten kept leaning, and Tovan had a terrible feeling she was listening to it on whatever Borg communication channels she retained. She talked to her human "sister," Eight, often enough that way...

"Individuality is overrated," she repeated.

"What made you decide that n--" he began, and stopped as he noticed Teilia's expression over the top of Ten's head. The realization was even worse than the time the commander'd wandered off with a historical human for a few hours, and Tovan'd finally decoded an equally historical Vulcan woman's hints. " _What?_ He's a--" There was no good way to end that sentence with Teilia right there; _a Reman_ was impolitic, and _assimilated_ apparently wasn't a deterrent. "I thought you were maybe sweet on that engineer fellow back on Virinat!"

"So are his senior officers," she said with a distant fatalism. "They were chasing him all over Risa last summer."

(Off behind them, Satra was talking quietly to the helmswoman. He felt the vibration of the ship change as it moved to warp.)

Firmly, Teilia said, "I think it's time for a recharge cycle in Engineering. We'll meet up with the _Comet_ and maybe the pair of you can figure out some way to _extract_ him from that sphere. Come on."

Tovan let go while Teilia shifted from holding their captain away from the turbolift, to leading her there. Ten stumbled a little, then followed with something resembling obedience. Grimacing, Tovan pointed at Satra. "You and Nirel can arm-wrestle over who has the bridge!" Then he hurried after the other two. Elements knew, if Ten decided to detour to an escape pod, Teilia might need more than words to keep Ten _out_ of one.


	3. Sisters Don't Let Sisters Re-assimilate

Eight stood in front of the small couch in Ten's quarters, where her Romulan sister was sulking and recharging at the same time, with gauntlet-like power-transfer units covering the charging plates in her hands. Said hands were clasped in her lap, and her shoulders were hunched.

By contrast, Eight had her hands on her hips. "You know that running off to a sphere is a bad idea!"

Ten muttered, "Free will means getting to change your mind about things..."

"That's not the point! Look, even if you went there, it's not like you'd get to listen to him talk all the time--"

"Only when messing with other ships," Ten corrected. "And then I could _help_."

Eight folded her arms in front of her chest. "You are _not_ serious."

Ten muttered something in a hodge-podge of languages that conveyed general disgruntlement, then added, in Terran, "Maybe."

"Look, I know that sphere is _purring_ now, but if you want a purring sphere, I can get you a tribble! An assimilated one, even!" Eight dug around in the pouch she'd brought and displayed the thing she'd gotten, mail-order, from an anonymous trader based on Drozana Station. It trilled, with the Borg choral effect.

Ten eyed it. "Tribbles are useless. Why would anyone assimilate one? Are you sure you didn't do it?"

"I didn't do it. I don't know why someone did it. It came that way." The red-haired human dropped it on her sister's lap. It continued its hopeful, electronic cooing, twitching its bulky eyepiece as if able to see through it.

"You can't even grow proper implants on them. They don't have bones to leach minerals from. You'd have to feed them special foods. And I'm not sure even the Collective could keep them from eating," Ten said, with the tone of someone who had actually thought about the issue. "Which means they'd be nibbling drones who were recharging, or maybe some of the organics that protect wiring... I suppose if they had a nanite factory, they might be able to assimilate small wires for use in making more nanites, and implants?"

Eight snickered. "We are Tribble of Borg. Feed us!"

Ten frowned at the tribble. Then she stripped off the charging gauntlets and held it up to scan it with her right eyepiece, from several angles. "It's been defanged."

"Of course! It'd probably try to assimilate people to feed it, otherwise."

"It hasn't been spayed, though..." Ten had pulled out her tricorder, for more in-depth scans.

"I don't know if even the Collective could figure out how to spay a tribble." Eight sat on the other side of the little couch and watched as Ten poked the thing, turned it upside down, and scanned the join between its eyepiece implant and skin. It alternately trilled and whined protest.

Abruptly, Ten dropped the tribble back in Eight's lap and stood. "We've got to get back to that sphere and drop another torpedo into it, so it can't get away."

"Ten," Eight said gently, "I just don't know if we can do anything. It's a sphere. It's full of drones. There's no way we can get in, _find_ him, and get him out before it goes on alert." She took a breath, and continued, very sadly, "Starfleet regulations say--"

Ten interrupted, "No. It's wounded. We simply need to keep it wounded." She headed for the door.

Eight stuffed the tribble back into its pouch and followed. "Look, I don't think the Republic wants a sphere."

"I'm sure Admiral Kererek could think of something to do with one." The Romulan stalked past the two security crew who were watching her door, ignoring that they glanced at each other with worried expressions before falling in behind Eight. "Couldn't the Federation?"

"Well, maybe... But the odds of being able to break their link enough to get the whole sphere, Ten?"

"Poor." She made it to the turbolift, waited for her sister, gave the security a flat look until they hurried on as well, and told the microphone, "Bridge."

"Dropping torps on them just gives them more chances to adapt their shields!"

"We only need to do this once, maybe twice more," Ten said. "But we need to buy time."

The doors opened and Ten strode onto her bridge. The dark-skinned Bajoran man in the command seat immediately stood. "Commander," he said.

"How soon can we get back to the sphere, Thydel?" Ten asked.

"Ah..." Thydel Ell's gaze darted to Eight, who shrugged. "A few hours, Commander. We're trying to keep the _Comet_ out of its probable scan range."

"We're going to cloak and drop another torpedo on the target. I need them delayed."

Nehor was at the tactical station. She said, sympathetically, "Commander, the longer _they_ have..."

"The more they might modify their new drone, yes. But if they're busy with repairs, they'll deprioritize anything extreme. I only need two days," she said, clenching one fist.

Her second-shift crew exchanged baffled glances. Thydel gave Eight another look, got another shrug, and said, "As you wish, Commander."

"Good. I'll be in the science lab," she said, and turned, commander's sash swirling and fluttering as she strode back for the turbolift. "Eight, if you want to beam back to the _Comet_ , now's the time."

"I just need to talk to them on the comm."

"Ready room's yours." Ten gave a baleful look at the two security who'd followed her, till they got in as well, then said, "Science lab two."

The doors slid closed.

Thydel asked, "Would she really have gone back to the Collective?"

Eight bit her lip. "I'd liiiike to say 'no way.' But I'm pretty sure I talked her out of it!"

Nehor turned worried eyes to the human ex-Borg as she moved across the bridge to the ready-room door. "How could she _want_ to return?"

Eight shrugged once more. "We grew up there," she said, which probably didn't answer the question for anyone but her, Ten, Thirteen, and Fourteen. Then she slipped into Ten's office to make the arrangements for her stay on the _Kinaen_. She'd have to talk quickly, because once they got close enough to the sphere that it might scan them, _Kinaen_ would cloak -- and it wasn't very helpful to cloak if you were sending a lot of comm traffic back and forth with other people.

But whatever Ten was planning, Eight wasn't going to let her do it alone.


	4. The Seeds of a Terrible Plan

Torpedo Number Two, On The Mark went off just as smoothly as Torpedo Number One had: de-cloak, drain the shields, drop a torpedo in the hole, get out of range with minimal damage, and re-cloak. While the bridge of the _Kinaen_ wasn't treated to a repeat of "the purring sphere," Eight was getting the more intimate version on her personal comm link. It set up a weird resonance in some of her eardrum bones, like if she'd gotten a giant tribble and used it for a pillow.

If Ten was listening to it as well, she wasn't showing it. From everyone's expressions and vital signs, Eight's sister was at least faking "normal" better than she had when everyone'd been under the impression Obsiek had been exploded along with his shuttle, instead of -- apparently -- beamed out of it just before he went boom.

Or beamed himself out, for all anyone knew, in the hopes of committing enough sabotage on the sphere to ensure his ship and crew got away even if the shuttle didn't hit anything really vital.

"It's looking for us, Commander," Tovan reported. "It's changed course."

"Keep us out of range, Konratra," Ten said. "Tovan, you've got the bridge. Unless you want it, Eight?"

"Um." Eight considered the fun of sitting in the command chair of a Romulan warbird, versus the faintly dubious poses of all the non-Ten Romulan officers already on that bridge. "I think I'll go with you."

"All right."

In the turbolift, Ten said, "Science lab two," which answered the question of _where_ Ten was going. Eight didn't say anything, but tried to make herself cut off the whisper of the Collective. Then again, maybe she should keep listening, in case they said something that made Ten react again?

Science Lab Two was a room off the main science area of the _Kinaen_ \-- the Republic wasn't going to let the Federation get away with being the major "research and exploration" force in the quadrant, apparently. The lab was filled with specimen containers, sized for live specimens to be kept in stasis, or perhaps smaller ones kept in terrarium-like conditions. Ten went to a closet and dragged out a waist-high barrel, nearly thick enough for her to hide within. It matched another one that rested nearby.

"Ten," Eight asked as her sister went back into the storage closet, "what are you doing?"

"The problem," Ten said, "is threefold."

"Including not answering the question?"

"I'm answering it! Hush."

"Mrrrrg."

"Threefold." Ten reappeared, dragging a large bag of some kind of nutrient kibble. "One, we have to locate him. Two, we have to get to him, without getting re-assimilated. Three, we have to get away again, with him."

"Four, we have to pry him out of the Collective after the fact."

"He hasn't been there long. Locutus was Borg for longer, and he was fine, wasn't he? Besides, you've got experience with liberating drones. I'll want you to talk to Security and make sure the brig is readied. And Satra, for prepping Sickbay, because we'll have at least _some_ augmentations to yank off."

"Right. So how are you managing one, two, and three?"

Ten rested her elbows on the lid of the second barrel. "Two and three are fairly close in solutions. What we need is a diversion. We could try uploading the usual sorts of viruses, and probably will anyway, but I don't trust those. We need _more_ chaos than just that. The sphere could fragment into unit-groups, all of them only talking to themselves, to isolate the memetic infection -- and still come after us."

"All right..." Eight debated whether she wanted to scan the barrel or not.

Ten moved to open the bag and pour a layer of kibble into the bottom of the barrel that she'd dragged out. Eight had a sinking feeling. The sinking feeling became sinking certainty when Ten opened the other barrel's lid -- and the fur-filled container began cooing dementedly.

"Here, help me toss most of them into the other barrel."

"You're going to try to fill the sphere with _tribbles_?!" Eight said, even as she moved to grab handfuls of fur-puffs. They screeched as they hit the bottom of the other barrel, then set up a mollified trill as they discovered the food there.

"They'll chew on the organics in order to reproduce, and we can send in just enough food to give them a head start. The sphere won't be able to get rid of them without venting everything to vacuum."

"Which would be inconvenient," Eight agreed. Just because Borg could handle vacuum for a while didn't mean they liked it, or could manage indefinitely, or didn't have equipment that rather preferred an oxygen-containing atmosphere.

"Exactly." Ten shoveled tribbles from one barrel to another. Their screeches were less offended as they landed on other tribbles instead of the harder drop of the early batch.

The last layer of fluffballs revealed very little food left at the bottom. Ten covered both barrels securely, then said, "Eight, could you go check on the brig and Sickbay precautions for me? I need to run a simulation."

The Borg whispers were very faint now, more a subliminal rumble than actual words. Eight pointed at her sister. "You are _not_ going off in an escape pod or shuttle, _right_?"

Ten lifted both hands. "I got a better idea. Free will means getting to change your mind about things."

"Promise?"

Ten rolled her eye. "Yes."

"All right..." With several glances over her shoulder, Eight left the lab room. She was only mildly reassured to see security crew guarding the lab's door.


	5. This Is a Terrible Idea

Much later that evening, ship-time, Eight stepped out of a borrowed regeneration unit in Engineering, nodded to the crew on duty, made appropriate social noises (in Romulan, since most of them were that species), and headed back to Lab Two.

There were several more barrels than there had been some hours ago. They were cooing. Eight stood in the doorway and said, succinctly, "Um."

Ten looked up from a terminal. "Um?"

"Um." Eight gathered her thoughts. "Do you really think a lot of tribbles are going to slow down the sphere's response enough to beam in and out again? And how _are_ you planning to find Obisek?"

Ten reached into a small bucket next to her and held up a silvery white tribble. "Catch," she said, and tossed it over.

Eight stepped forward -- letting the door close behind her -- and caught the tribble. It shrilled unhappily, then calmed as she patted it. Its eventual trill was... just a little more vibraty than usual. "Ten!" she protested, lifting it up and turning it around until she found the small eyepiece. "And you keep asking _me_ if I've assimilated anything! And teasing me about my insect experiments!"

"You have assimilated things! Your personal pad, remember? Not to mention those insects you just mentioned." The Romulan pulled another white tribble from the bucket and held it up to her face. "And who's a fluffy little drone, hmmm?"

"You're kidding," Eight said, but scanned the one she held. She almost dropped it. "It's got an active nanite factory!"

"Of course. How else is it going to assimilate its own young before they're born?" Ten's expression was distinctly un-Borg-like.

Eight opened her mouth. Eight closed her mouth. Eight stared, eyepiece to eyelens, at the tribble she held. "You've made a tribble collective."

"Mm."

Eight remembered her own experiments. "Ten... Did you..." She was nearly afraid to open her communication node to incoming transmissions.

"Have to feed them heavy-mineral-content food? Yes."

"Not what I'm asking." She stared at her sister. "Ten, you _didn't_."

"Didn't _what_?"

"Elements, are you going to make me _say_ it?" Eight demanded. "You're not in a _unit_ with them, are you?!"

"Not... quite." Ten grimaced.

"Teeeeeeennnnn."

She dropped the tribble back into the bucket. "It's one of the weaknesses of _not_ being de-fanged. Yes, we _can_ assimilate, but if we do, it's the basic pattern, and once the subspace communication node forms, it tries to link to the Collective. So it's only good as a deadman switch, or a last resort."

Eight scanned the white tribble again. "These don't have it, any more than my insects do."

"The Federation did enough hacking of our nanites, when they pulled us out of the Collective... It's not like it's impossible. Or unthinkable. It's not _perfection_."

"I know..." She sighed. "I guess even a lot of tribbles can't really challenge you for control over the unit."

"Mm, right." Ten grimaced again. "That's the other thing. Even if the nanites don't try to call for the Collective, if you want to have any input to the new drone... It's all about the will of the units in the link. That was one reason I gave up on assimilation back on the Federation ship that took us. I wasn't sure I could maintain control."

"Ry'var would've looked terrible, bald," Eight said, recalling the Caitian counselor who'd shepherded her -- and, she later found out, the rest of the rescued Borg -- from _drone_ to _person._

"But as research tells us," Ten said, in a mode that reminded Eight of any number of professors at Starfleet Academy, "the Borg Queen controls the Collective. Or embodies it. Or, at least... guides it. Without us even feeling it as anything _but_ the Will of the Collective. So presumably, there's a way to... steer, without being swamped. Because ego aside, I don't think a Borg Queen is actually someone strong-willed enough to subjugate _every single drone_ on her own. Let alone Locutus. All at the same time."

Eight went and dropped the tribble-drone back into the bucket. "Granted." Locutus had been before their time, but echoes remained... It had been in the Starfleet Academy history classes, too.

"So there must be a way to make the link be stronger one way than the other. To bias it. To stack the deck."

"To be," Eight translated, "a Borg Queen."

Ten shrugged. "Basically."

"Of _tribbles_."

Ten shrugged again.

"...Tribborg Queen."

Ten cleared her throat. " _Anyway_ , it was the only way I could think of to find Obisek _and_ cause chaos, quickly. They have enough augmentation for visuals. They have enough communication ability to transmit it back to, er, the tribble collective, encrypted enough that it should stop the sphere from accessing the data as well. And they have enough integral nanites to continue breeding and having assimilated babies all over the sphere."

"Where they'll eat organics _and_ any wiring or components small enough to fit into their teeny mouths. Ten, this is a _terrible_ idea."

"It's better than trying to go over there and take over the sphere via subversion," Ten said, drawing herself up to her full height of well below six feet and attempting to look like a regal Romulan noble. "Do you want to be hooked into them or not?"

Eight considered this. "Are they cooing in your head?"

Ten's expression was bleak. "Yes."

"Then no. They're all yours. Tribborg Queen."

Ten stuck her tongue out at her sister.


	6. The Borg Are Known for Adaptation

The cooing was getting more intense. It haunted her regeneration cycle -- and she didn't dare use the slower charging and sleep that had become her more common habit, because of what it would do to her dreams.

Tribbles wanted food and cuddling. They wanted temperatures that weren't too hot or too cold. They wanted to be bulked together until the food ran out, and then they wanted to spread out and find food (and have babies), repeating in infinite patterns of contagion.

And the born-assimilated babies wanted the same, and linked into the tribble collective almost before birth, if they had enough minerals in their diet.

Clearly, Ten was going to have to perfect the filtering controls before she tried anything like this again. The Collective had its own complicated "volume control" on the subspace linkage that permitted it to exist as a unity and not a fractured mess.

Ten hadn't thought she'd need anything _half_ so complex.

"Commander? Ten?" Tovan asked. "Are you all right?"

Ten reviewed her recent, short-term recordings. She'd been chirring softly in the back of her throat. She straightened in her chair. "Yes. I'm fine. Are the barrels prepped?"

"Yes, Commander." He sounded dubious, which was entirely reasonable. Only Ten's sister knew that they were anything more than standard tribbles. On the other hand, so long as she wasn't trying to hop into an escape pod, Tovan was probably going to go along with whatever lunatic scheme she asked for.

At least the cooing might help drown out the sphere's broadcast when it realized they'd come back to harass it again.

Eight was at the science station behind the command chair, and asked, "Do you think they'll have figured out what you're doing yet with the torpedoes?"

"Possibly," Ten replied, and drummed her fingers on the chair arm. "If we can't do enough damage along with the furry present, I'll need to bait them before we cloak again."

"Bait?" Tovan asked, suspiciously.

"A broadcast, not an escape pod," she said. But she did twist around in her chair to look at her sister. "Broadcast on the private channel, so don't panic if you hear it, all right?"

"Mmph," Eight said.

Good enough. Ten swiveled back to sit on the command chair properly, and reflected that for the bridge of a species notorious for paranoia and backstabbing, there were rather a lot of stations positioned _behind_ her. Perhaps it was intended as a "check and balance" for more typical members of her nominal race.

Konratra was at the helm. "Starting our attack run on a different vector," she stated. "Extreme weapons range in twenty seconds."

Veril was on the bridge for this pass, with Teilia in Engineering; the younger Reman was the Chief Engineer, but Teilia had more experience. Veril said, "Ready to drop cloak."

Over the internal comm, the transporter room reported, "Ready to transport."

"Torpedoes ready," Tovan said. "Fore and aft."

At the science station, Eight chirped, "Inversion beam ready!"

"Drop cloak when we're within inversion beam range," Ten instructed. "I want a regular torpedo from the front launcher, Tovan, then drop the heavy one in the hole as we're making our escape. Once we're cloaked, jink hard, Konratra. They'll be adapting."

"Range in fifteen," the helmswoman reported. "Eleven. Ten. Nine..."

Being the commander was like being the first of a unit-group, only with even less to do on the ship. Coordinating everyone was important, yes, but the only times Ten got personally involved was if things were going very badly and she was having to dump healing nanites on people or take over a station.

She hated those times.

She hoped this wasn't going to be one of those times.

"De-cloaking," Veril said, and the ship hummed with the change.

"Beams beaming!" Eight's voice was gleeful as the viewscreen showed its computer-augmented model of the sphere's forcefields going down.

"Torpedo one away," Tovan said, as the sparkling missile arced toward the sphere. "Heavy torpedo ready in the aft launcher, and dropping mines."

Ten said, "Transporter room?"

The communication link was blurry with the sound of matter being converted to energy. "Yes, Commander! Barrels are empty!"

Eight said, "Scans confirm the fuzzy presents are on the sphere."

Ten could have told everyone that, from the way the feeds had hiccupped in the back of her mind during the transport, and now reported tribble annoyance that food was scattered about. She concentrated on that channel, with the encryptions set to her alone. _^Disperse!^_ she ordered, as if she could shove the tribbles away from each other on the sphere by some telekinetic power. Her gloved fingers splayed apart on the chair arms as if physical effort would help.

The ship rocked and shuddered, distracting her from trying to control the tribble collective. Eight yelped, "Tractor beam!" in unison with Veril's more measured tone. Veril continued alone, "Standard shield-drain, Commander!"

"Konratra, do what you can to get us further away! Veril, Teilia, keep the ship intact! Tovan--"

"Aft missile away. Nine seconds till the next set of mines are loaded."

"Singularity charge?" Ten snapped.

"Almost sufficient!"

"Singularity shielding when it's ready. Teilia, get your engineering teams on the weak spots!"

The whisper was starting up in her communication node. _^You will be assimilated,^_ came the murmur, overlaid with the deep, velvet-rough voice of a certain Reman commander-general. It cut through the chirring of the tribbles in their channel. It cut through her habitual response of _Been there, done that._ It went up and down her spine as if the charging plates there were arcing with electricity, till she wanted to answer, _I've made improvements. I want to share them with you, unfolding in our minds._

She forced herself not to show it. The reactions were irrelevant to the task at hand: keeping the ship intact long enough to escape the sphere.

Eight called, "I can get the _Comet_ here with slipstream in less than an hour!"

"If it takes that long, we'll either be out of range or imploded," Ten said. She didn't say, _Or assimilated._ "Helm?"

"Pulling us away," Konratra said, voice strained as if she were dragging the _Kinaen_ personally.

"Borg reported on science decks!" Tovan said.

"If they're not Reman or fresh, standard response," Ten ordered. Standard response involved blocking invading Borg into small areas with internal shields if they worked, shooting a lot, and/or beaming them off again, depending on what was possible when the ship was being wrenched around.

"Singularity shielding engaged!" Veril said, and the _Kinaen_ jerked with the feel of the singularity's energy smeared into a thin layer that enveloped and protected the ship. "Initiating recharge! Thirty seconds till we can hold charge again!"

"Torpedoes and mines at will, Tovan," Ten said. "Return fire with the cutting beam."

Eight said, "Trying to get a shield rotation that'll break us free..."

"She's got it!" said the helmswoman. "Pulling us away! Best speed!"

Best speed wasn't full impulse, but it was what they had when energy had to be diverted to shields and weapons.

"Eight, scan them -- did we keep their engines damaged?"

"Not sure... _ghay'cha'!_ Don't think so."

"We can cloak in seven, Commander!" Veril said.

Konratra added, "Out of range in twelve!"

The units were seconds.

"Cloak in twelve," Ten said. "I don't want to take the hits when our shields go down."

As they acknowledged that, she gripped the chair arms and sent her own acknowledgement on the subspace channel. No words, not yet, but the code that meant, _A drone is listening._

The sphere hesitated a moment, then blasted her with the answering signal, vibrating through her mind and skull and ears with that rich voice, backed by the sphere's chorus. _**^ Kinaen. Resistance is futile. You will return to the Collective.^**_

She gasped. Doubled over, wanting to clutch at her head but unable to release her fingers from their deathgrip on the chair. Accessed the planned words. Replied. _^Wait for me.^_ It was a thin whisper, a droplet falling into a black and chartreuse sea.

 _ **^Return to us,^**_ the sea commanded.

"And cloaking!" Veril said.

"Evasive maneuvers," Konratra reported. "It's trying to scan for us!"

Ten tried to focus on the tribbles' channel. Inane, stupid creatures. Useless to the Collective. Worse than useless. Pests.

Pests that had been fed on rich, mineral-laden food and sent to breed on the sphere. Pests with eyepieces. Pests that provided more input than she could handle without concentration.

She opened the channel wide and let their mindless cooing and shrilling fill her thoughts. "Get... get us away," she choked, past the urge to trill and chirr and shriek -- and that was the last she could deal with the outside world, in a two-front battle to keep from allowing the tribble feedback to influence her behavior, and prevent herself from responding to the sphere. From responding to Obisek, whose voice had made her ears tingle from the moment she'd first heard it.

After a time -- and she was still too distracted to consult the internal clock that would tell her how long it had been -- she heard Satra and Eight, coaxing her out of the chair. She transferred her grip to their sleeves, and let herself be led along. (The sphere continued to whisper. All the usual phrases, but interspersed with others. _**We will find you, little spy**_ was the one that nearly made her reply... but shrieking _Resist them! Control the sphere!_ would be unlikely to succeed. If his magnificent voice could work on anyone but Ten herself, he would already rule that craft. The tribbles complained and cooed, distracting and confusing.)

Eight shook her. "Ten. _Ten._ Can you shut down the link? C'mon, sister. Shut off the link now... Don't listen to him anymore."

Borg links were never meant to be turned off. The best they could manage was to turn attention away, downgrade the priority on the signals, stop sending return acknowledgements.

"I've got to fix that," Ten whispered. "Eight, put me in a shielded cell. We had one prepared, didn't we?"

Behind her, Satra muttered, "With a cold shower?"

"Would that even work on me?" Ten mused out loud as they led her to her own brig, and raised the screens that shut off both tribbles and Collective whispers.


	7. Stressed Borg in Brig

Eight leaned against the wall inside the shielded brig cell. Ten huddled on the very edge of the bench, wedged into the corner.

Eight couldn't really blame her. Once the sphere'd taken active note of Ten, the targeted communication had gotten... intense. Eight had been dragged to movies and live performances by Elisa, when they were both in the Academy; the singers and actors Elisa had swooned over were...

Well, they weren't Collective, to start. It'd taken a metaphorical crowbar to pry Eight and Ten out of the Collective, and even longer before Eight had decided that emotions weren't going to do something awful to her. She still thought dreaming was a terrible concept, and was glad her "sleep cycles" generally just ran through memory recordings. From what little they'd spoken of it, Ten'd been nearly as reluctant to stop being a drone.

And those performers, good voices or not, hadn't been focusing all their attention on any one person in the audience. Unlike Borg-Obisek.

It was probably a really, _really_ good thing the sphere hadn't realized what they'd assimilated and tapped more of his skills. Out loud, Eight said, "Think they'll be giving him a fancy Latin name soon?"

"Elements," Ten groaned. "It must not be in communication with the rest of the Collective, or he'd have one already. And be on the way to the Vault."

The Vault, that gigantic station where the shattered Romulan Star Empire had stored all kinds of dangerous things. Including a Borg sphere of their very own, which Ten had once considered hijacking. Including production facilities for thalaron weapons, which might or might not have been thoroughly destroyed by now. And now including Remans who wanted a backup stronghold outside New Romulus, as well as some Romulan refugees who continued to eke out their existence in the nooks and crannies of the station rather than trust in the Republic's ability to protect anyone.

Eight considered how much raw material the Vault contained, and how big a Unimatrix it could make, and how big an explosion it would be if the current inhabitants figured out how to blow up that captured sphere as a self-destruct...

"That would be bad."

Ten curled over and held her head again. "That would be _worse_ than the tribbles."

"Do you need any help with those?" Eight asked, with some trepidation.

"No... It's fine. I have protocols to query them in batches... There's only seven hundred and fifty-four... fifty-nine..."

"You're not still linked to them?" Eight said, sitting down next to her sister. "The shields--"

"I'm just extrapolating." Ten rubbed her face, gloves sliding over skin and metal equally. "I opened the link to all of them, to try to drown out... the Collective."

"Was that overlapping? I could've sworn I heard cooing..." Eight frowned. She could still hear cooing, and she didn't think it was her imagination.

Ten slanted her a look. "Maybe it's _your_ tribble. If it's got a communication node active, better shut it down before we get out of this shielding. I don't want the sphere tracking us."

Eight dug out her own pet and engaged scanning mode on her eyepiece. "Huh! You're right. I suppose it thought the purring sphere was a really big tribble and wanted to talk to it?"

"Assimilate that thing properly and turn off the node," Ten advised.

"I didn't assimilate it in the first place!" Eight protested, but prodded at it with her finger-probes till she had access.

"Probably some Ferengi did," Ten said. "Came out of a cube. Needed something to sell that was unique and easy to produce."

"Well, I've fixed it now." Without its own ability to generate nanites, she'd been able to swamp it with her own. "How are you doing?"

"We've got to get Obisek back before the sphere re-connects with the Collective. How I'm doing is irrelevant, so long as I'm functional."

"Will you be functional when we go to get him?" There was no question it was going to be them, and them alone, who went onto that sphere. Plan B was pretty much dependent on memetic programming that could (hopefully) infect the sphere and send the drones into confusion or a regeneration cycle -- and there was no need to risk any non-Borg getting assimilated. And since Plan C involved restoring Eight and Ten's unit-link and attempting to subvert the sphere as a temporary Queen-pair, they couldn't bring any of Eight's various liberated bridge-crew, who'd never been _part_ of their Thirty.

Plan D blew the sphere up, quite possibly with both sisters still on it. No one liked Plan D.

"I'll at least be functional enough to be a distraction," Ten said. "Let's go. I need to start sifting through eight hundred and twenty-two tribbles and figure out if any of them have found him."

"Can't you assign, well, unit-leaders?"

Ten's expression was once again bleak. "There is no such thing as a 'dominant' tribble. And I don't think your wasp-queens would work. Tribbles don't sting well."

"They work for insects," Eight muttered as she stood up and waved at the brig-officer.

The shields went down. The quiet murmur resumed from her communication node, but without the force of the prior transmission. Still, she glanced at her sister to make sure it wasn't hitting Ten harder.

Ten had stood up as well. She wrapped her arms around herself in a shuddering self-hug, then shifted to arms crossed in front of her chest and walked out. "I think the sphere gave up for now. Mostly."

In text, Eight asked, _^And the tribbles?^_

_^Fewer than I'd expected. Some of them probably found a Klingon drone and screamed till they got deactivated. I don't think the sphere will realize the tribbles are more than assimilated nuisances, though.^_

From one of the other cells emerged the two security-Borg -- both originally humans, and Starfleet exchange officers. The male said, deadpan, "I think he knows you, Captain."

"Only a little," Ten said. "It could have been worse. Are you both all right?"

"Acceptably," the female one said. "We were able to repel the boarders before we sought shelter."

"Did we capture any of them?"

"Sorry, Captain," the man said. "They were all too dangerous. And none of them new -- if they had any organic bits left besides maybe half their heads, I'd be surprised."

Ten rubbed her face again. "I'd better look over where they were and see if they managed to leave nanites on my ship. If either of you need to take a recharge cycle, it's authorized."

"Thank you, Captain," the woman said. "F'rul should have the list of Borg incursions."

"Excellent." Nodding at the pair, Ten strode out of the brig as usual, with her charcoal captain's sash fluttering from her shoulder-decoration. Eight waved to their fellow ex-Borg and followed, keeping silent while Ten tapped on her wristband and got the information from her Caitian exchange officer.

"How long till Plan A?" Eight asked once that conversation was done.

"I'm nearly to a thousand 'little spies.'" Ten smiled, with a twist of her pale lips that was only barely amused. "Once I've finished checking my ship for attempted subversions, I should have another couple hundred. Then I'm going to interface with a terminal and see how much coverage I really have, and how much I can get them to disperse. Statistically, a few hours should do it. Then we get a fast regen cycle, and it's time for Plan A."


	8. No One Tells Tovan Anything

Tovan hefted the basket of nutrient-drink bottles in one hand and poked at Lab Two's door-lock to see if he could come up with any overrides that would get it open. Among the things he didn't ask Ten was exactly how close she was to the _Kinaen;_ there were all sorts of songs about ships and the captains who loved them, but those weren't about ex-Borg commanders who really _could_ get intimate with their ships in ways mere flesh-and-blood commanders couldn't imagine. 

He was in luck. Either Ten hadn't assimilated the lock where no one could see, or she hadn't ordered it to respond to her and her alone. A mere invocation of his First Officer's codes, and the door slid open.

The pair of ex-Borg sisters were standing over a hologram of the sphere, with Ten's wrist-probes embedded in the console's surface. (And that was slightly creepy at the best of times; when she'd given over her usual twitchy scanning of the surroundings, to stare fixedly at the object of her attention... Well, Tovan was too old to run and hide under the bed.)

The holographic sphere was filled with little white pinpricks, most of which were surrounded by slightly larger chartreuse dots. As he watched, areas of the sphere brightened and dimmed in what was, he realized, a search pattern.

"Think they'd have him in surgery?" Eight murmured.

"And risk. He'd. Be mind-fogged. When we showed. Up. Again?" Ten replied, words broken apart as if...

As if she were doing something even more complicated than cracking the weapon-locks on an antique warbird.

Tovan wondered what else she'd beamed aboard with those diversionary tribbles.

A new area of the sphere glimmered, deep inside its core. Small red blobs formed in it, fading to chartreuse one at a time -- until the last. That light turned into a teal-green star, vivid and pulsing like a heartbeat. Barely above a whisper, Ten said, "Got. Him."

"How bad will it be?" Eight asked.

"Sixteen was worse. We were worse." Ten lifted her head and turned it to look in Tovan's direction. "Yes?"

He held up the basket. "Nutrient drinks. Need Veril to run a power-cable in here?"

Ten lifted her free hand and all but caressed the hologram. "No. Faster to do a regeneration cycle. Then we're going in."

Tovan gingerly approached and set the bottles on the edge of the display's surface. "You can keep track of him?"

"Yes." Ten picked up a bottle and considered it a moment before waving it in his direction. "Help?"

He opened it for her and gave it back. "What if he moves?"

It was red-haired Borg who answered, having taken a long swig from her drink. "That's a control core, and he's in a regen niche there. They haven't given him a fancy Latin name yet, but it's only a matter of time. He'd be running that whole sphere, betcha, if they were linked to the full Collective to keep him on a leash."

And how in a Klingon hell was Tovan supposed to threaten to break the elbows of an entire sphere if someone messed with Ten's heart? Bad enough to think about giving a brother's traditional warning to that intimidating Reman all on his own, but with even _half_ the augmentations that made Ten able to more than hold her own in a ground-side firefight or brawl?

No one had bothered to mention all of this back when he'd decided Ten was nigh as much a little sister as Rinna. Or mention that Borg sensibilities meant Ten's head could be turned by just about any species.

His sigh got him curious looks from both sisters, and he tried to be stoic so they wouldn't ask. By way of diversion, he said, "Will you be able to beam in nearby if we have their shields down?"

Ten stroked the hologram again, this time sinking a finger into the middle of it. "I think so. Here or here."

"And can we get you _out_ again quickly?"

Her gaze was fixed on that pulsing teal star. "If we do it right."

He tapped the bottle to remind her to drink, too disquieted to think of anything else to say.

Eight chirped, "So if we totally fail at plans A, B, and C, what Latin names do you think we'll get?"

Ten set the bottle down again. "You can have Latin, but wouldn't I get some old Vulcan dialect?"

"No one's getting renamed by the Borg," Tovan said firmly. "We'll get you out of there. All three of you," he added without gritting his teeth.

He was proud of himself for that last when Ten managed to quirk a smile at him. She lifted her nutrient drink in a mock-toast. "Or else you'll blow that sphere into little pieces and sift the wreckage. We can't have the Collective showing up on the Vault's doorstep."

Tovan repeated, "We'll get you out." He set the basket on the floor and folded his arms sternly. "Now go get charged up. I'll be checking on you in a quarter-hour."

"We'll be good," Ten promised while Eight gulped down more of her meal.

He nodded at them and made his exit. Better not to know how they'd found Obisek in the sphere. Better not to know what Plan C was.

Better not to know a lot of things, where Ten's Borg upbringing was concerned. _Tovan_ himself would trust her with his unassimilated life -- and pretty much had, more than once, as well as vice versa -- but if he ever spoke about his suspicions? Other people wouldn't understand. It would look bad to anyone who didn't know Ten.

And better not to wonder what old Vulcan would be for "ambitious little lunatic."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The Vulcan for "ambitious little lunatic" is probably simply... "Romulan.")


	9. Initiating Plan A

Hyperventilation was for people who couldn't exert absolute control over their metabolism. (Well, except for the parts that'd been put back by that Starfleet surgeon.) Still, Ten wished she'd dared take the time to figure out a way to entirely shut off her communication node. She'd hoped the sphere would send their most _effective_ new drone to a regeneration cycle so he wouldn't be _talking_ at them, but the Universe had not cooperated with this. According to her tribble spies, he showed no signs of moving from the control core they'd found him in.

Bridge chatter -- minimal, but present -- came over the ship's internal comm as Ten waited on the transporter pad with her sister. They both had pistols and swords; Ten wore her blade at her hip, a narrower weapon than the giant slab of metal Eight had on her back. Both were strong, well-made, and good at slicing past personal shielding. The pistols were more in case they had to shoot something _besides_ a drone, considering how quickly Borg shields adapted.

Over the comm, Tovan's voice raised above the murmurs of the others, since he had the command for this (even if he was refusing to sit in the chair). "Start our attack run, best speed."

Veril's countdown to de-cloaking started at seven.

Ten braced herself for what the sphere would surely be blasting her with. Her ex-Borg security, One and Five, had opted to stay in the shielded brig cell.

Obisek might've called himself "just a warrior" more than once, but he _had_ been leading the Reman Resistance, and none of the others there were charismatic figureheads. The man could command. Give impassioned speeches. Gain followers.

And united with the Collective -- or even just the fragment of it in that sphere -- his talents had been harnessed to the siren calling of Borg to Borg.

The Collective rarely held grudges. Once an enemy was assimilated, the new drone was used according to its talents. A drone returned to the fold would be assigned likewise.

**_^ Kinaen. Disarm your weapons. Prepare your crew for assimilation. You will be returned to the Collective.^_ **

Even braced, the voice in her head nearly sent Ten to her knees. Dimly, she realized that though she had it worst, with her now-regrettable vulnerability to good voices -- if One and Five were being affected? Obisek must've known how to use his voice as a weapon of persuasion, consciously and not by instinct alone. And now the sphere knew.

Eight commanded the transport. Glittering green fire wrapped around them, and when it cleared...

_Home._

She hadn't had such a reaction to a Borg ship since... ever, after her cube had been destroyed. Since she'd decided that if the Collective could not restore her to her Thirty, the Collective was irrelevant. But with that voice in her head?

Her legs couldn't hold her, and she crumpled.

***

They had materialized in a small niche: an environmental control node, mostly hidden from the main corridor.

The sphere's voice (and really, Obisek was _entirely_ fast-tracked for a Latin name now) was getting worse. Or better, depending on how you looked at it.

Eight looked at it with co-mingled horror and admiration. It was all directed at the _Kinaen_ \-- or her sister, with a Borgish co-mingling of captain and ship -- but even the fringes were starting to gnaw at her. Normally the Collective was implacable and single-minded.

Normally the Collective didn't modify the standard instructions, even for people who'd _been_ drones.

Normally the Collective didn't say things like, _**^Disarm your weapons and return to the Borg. Your people will be one with the Borg.^**_ And they _certainly_ didn't say it in a voice that implied they were offering chocolate-covered fruit and a fancy Risian drink to go with the assimilation. And maybe a massage with scented oils, too.

Eight was about to whisper something about him getting clever, trying to turn liberated crew into assimilation vectors, when Ten folded up like she'd been shot.

In Romulan, Ten's name -- _Dha_ \-- was a soft puff of air, and Eight used that as she thumped to her own knees and dragged her sister against her. "Do you need to go back?" she breathed.

" _Am_ back," Ten whimpered, with a very un-Borg-like catch in her voice.

There was no good answer to that statement. Better to treat it as irrelevant. "C'mon, sister," Eight said, dragging the smaller Romulan with her as she stood up. "Gotta make a credible try at taking over if we want Latin names."

There was no correcting _old Vulcan_ from Ten, which worried Eight, but at least her sister wasn't falling over again. She continued leaning on Eight, but not-falling-over was good. Eight prompted her, "Do the tribbles still have him in sight?"

"Ah." Ten lifted her head and raised a hand. A soft cooing echoed from the corners of the environmental control niche they were in. In Eight's pouch, her own assimilated tribble answered, with a slightly harsher, more mechanical sound.

 _And if they get Ten,_ Eight thought, _they'll get her tribbles, too. ...Creeeeeepy._

Ten said, "He's still at the command node." She straightened and drew her sword from the scabbard. "The tribble connection is helping some. Let's go."

Eight pulled her own blade free and held it easily in one hand. "Ready."

They left briskly, with Ten in the lead.

The hallway was, of course, lined with regeneration chambers. About half of them held drones of various races -- mostly the Terran-like ones, though after processing, drones without forehead or ear differences appeared pretty similar to each other. The other chambers were empty, and with the purring voice in the back of Eight's mind, she could imagine stepping into one and just relaxing into the enveloping will of the Collective like someone'd relax into a warm, bubble-filled bath.

She couldn't tell if Ten was thinking the same thing, since her sister was in full "look at everything and scan most of it" mode, twitching her head around constantly.

Near the floor, a white tribble gleamed amid a coil of wiring. Up near the ceiling, now that Eight glanced around herself, another pair of them clung to one of the environmental tubes that circulated air in the sphere and prevented inefficient build-ups of waste gasses in any one place.

Ahead of Eight, Ten said, "Drones activating behind us. Fight now or run?"

Eight weighed how long they'd been there, how long before the _Kinaen_ would be able to use the tachyon inversion beams again without overheating things enough to explode consoles, and how many drones they'd passed. "Run. We can hold them off better at the command node's door."

Swords held to the side to prevent self-impalement if they tripped -- they ran.


	10. The Plan Contacts the Enemy

"Shields going!" Veril snapped. "Charge climbing!"

From the internal comm, D'Vex -- third-shift chief in Engineering -- growled, "Dammit, Tovan, I'm _retired!"_ That meant Teilia was busy somewhere else in Engineering, but at least the singularity wasn't imploding.

"Heavy torpedo away," Tovan said, more from habit than because anyone but him needed to know.

"We're free of the tractor beam," Konratra announced, and the starfield in the viewscreen shifted as she sent the _Kinaen_ onto a new vector.

"Internal forcefields holding in the starboard wing," Nirel said. "Tachyon inversion beam ready in five."

"Hold that for getting them out again," Tovan ordered, then grabbed hold of the console-edges as the ship jolted around them.

Veril snapped, "Engines off-line!" Her hands flew over her own console. "I've got enough charge for shields or a jump -- pick one!"

Ten would've picked the jump. Tovan said, "Shadows!"

Veril nearly glanced over her shoulder at him, from how her hood twitched, but her hands moved with surety. "Engaging, sir!"

Outside, the singularity's space-twisting energies cast reflections of the _Kinaen_ , exact duplicates that surrounded him and -- with some variations due to quantum effects -- moved roughly with his own movements.

Or, in this case, didn't move and drifted vaguely in various directions. But the sphere's energy beams lanced through a shadow- _Kinaen_ instead of the real one. Tovan dropped some mines and called, "Can we cloak?"

"The shadows will persist," Veril said. "But if we can't move, it can just shoot where we're hiding."

 _Fvadt,_ Tovan thought, which was a weak curse compared to what Ten could come up with. "As soon as we can move, cloak and get out of range."

Nirel said, "Sir, the _Comet_ is hailing us."

"Tell them they can join the party, but we're trying to cloak!" Tovan said, then added, "Shifting power to rear shields." Normally Veril would've been handling that, but she was busy.

"Yes, sir!" Nirel added, "The sphere's transmission is getting more disturbing, sir."

"Joy. Package up a sample and send it to the _Comet_. Tell them to open it if we implode, so the Vault doesn't get a surprise!" Or New Romulus, but Tovan'd seen the Borg sphere that was already tucked away in the Vault -- and seen Ten's expression as they'd gazed up at it, like an exiled daughter might stare at her queen-mother's lost throne. 

"Quarter-impulse back!" Konratra said.

"Cloaking now!" Veril answered. "Reinforcing internal structural shields -- it's firing on us and the shadows as well!"

"Everyone brace!" Tovan ordered through the ship comm. Cloaking when under heavy fire was always a roll of the dice.

With a bit of triumph, Veril said, "Ha, shadows fading! They won't know which of us cloaked!"

And, Elements be thanked, only a few beams smacked into the _Kinaen_ as Konratra sent him into a sharp port-belly turn.

The sphere itself slid over the ship, far too close for comfort. Veril gave damage reports and estimates of when they'd be fixed. Nirel reported the _Comet_ was going to come in closer and lurk far enough away to evade if the sphere started for them.

Tovan shifted the viewscreen to the aft cameras, watching as the sphere moved into the area where they'd been. And somewhere deep in that sphere, his adopted kid-sister commander and her human sib were going above and beyond the call of duty to get that Reman out of the Borg's clutches.

If they could do it, it'd be the kind of heroics that made politics easier for Proconsul D'Tan with their prickly Reman cousins. If they couldn't do it... it'd still be the kind of heroics that diplomats would shake in each other's faces.

Tovan slid his fingers over the virtual buttons on his console. "Nehor, how are we doing for unwanted guests?"

"Only had a single group of them this time, sir," she replied from the internal comm. "Still the all-mechanical types, and still nothing we could salvage."

"Understood." Tovan took a breath. "I want you ready to take over at my station. If something goes wrong, I'm going after Ten."

"She doesn't want you put in danger, sir," Nehor said.

Over her shoulder on the bridge, Veril said, "You're _not_ going alone."

"Let's have that fight if they don't send the 'get us out of here' signal like they're supposed to," Tovan said. "But make the arrangements, Nehor, in case we don't hear from them in time."

"Yes, sir," she said.

***

The straight route to the command node was blocked. Normally, this would not have been too much of a problem, as a pair of ex-Borg had quite a good chance to crack the minimal locks on internal doors. But this door had been welded shut.

"I think," Eight called as she smacked a drone in the head with the flat of her sword, shoving it off-balance and into one of its fellows, "he's expecting us!"

Beside her, Ten sprayed a greenish blast of paralytic nanites into another drone's face and followed that with a pommel to its jaw. "I _refuse_ to be assimilated by anything without a Latin name!" she snapped back.

Eight brought the edge of her blade down on a hand that was reaching for her, finger-probes extended. "Good policy!"

Ten slashed, then kicked a drone in a place that would've been painful in most non-assimilated beings -- mostly because there wasn't much of a midsection left to kick. The drone staggered back, and the Romulan extended her left, kit-equipped arm. The exothermic field ignited a clump of the attacking Borg, and the units stumbled and shifted their balance to move away from the fire.

It gave Eight a chance to duplicate the move with her own kit's exothermic field module, then decapitate the drone remaining on their side of the flames. Tactical drones shot at them from the other side, but so far the firepower wasn't enough to take the sisters' shields down quickly, and the other drones were waiting till the exothermic fields dissipated. "We're still kind of trapped."

"Kind of." Ten sheathed her sword and took hold of one of the cables in the wall. "Start climbing."

Eight looked up. Above her sister's pure white hair, an equally white tribble peered from a shadowy alcove near the ceiling. "Huh!" she said, and headed up in Ten's wake.

Below them, the tactical drones lifted their weapon-arms and continued to fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diane Duane's Romulans refer to ships as "he." So do most of these.


	11. There's No Monopoly on Bad Plans

The beginning of the window had opened for Ten and Eight's transmission. This was the earliest they'd expected to have gotten to where Obisek was, so they could slap a beacon on him and get all three of them beamed out. If nothing had gone wrong.

If. If. If.

There were too many _if_ s in this plan for Tovan's peace of mind.

"Sir, the Borg sphere is..." Nirel hesitated. "Hailing us. Sort of. Broadcasting. With the ship's name on it. It's on repeat."

With trepidation, Tovan said, "On screen..."

It wasn't an image of any one Borg. It was... from the eyepiece camera of a drone. A tall one, who stood among its fellows, raising an arm, and through the crowd...

It was aiming at Ten and Eight, who were cornered at some kind of dead end. Their swords were out and they were fighting back.

 _"Your commander requires your assistance,"_ said the Obisek-Borg chorus. And the transmission cut off.

Someone said, " _Imirrhlhhse._ " Oddly, it wasn't Tovan, because he only said, "Latin name incoming."

Nehor stepped forward from the archway that led to the turbolift. "Sir," she said. "Recommend we prepare to destroy the sphere with the _Comet_ 's aid."

"Not unless it starts calling to us with Ten's voice," Tovan said, turning his chair to look at her more directly.

"Recommend we attempt to beam them out immediately, then," she said, back straight as if she were in the middle of a military inspection. Even her normal slightly-worried expression was colder than usual.

"I don't want Ten to kill me." More, he didn't want to see her in mourning again, like when she'd thought Obisek had suicided in that shuttle. She hid her infatuations well, but apparently they burned Fire-hot where no one could see.

"Sir," the security officer insisted, "the sphere has already evidenced it knows how to be _cunning_. If they _already have her_ , they might not say so. You might not find out otherwise until she had her nanoprobes in your throat."

"So we'll beam them all to the prepared brig cell and sort it out later," Tovan said. "I'm not giving up on her, Nehor."

She looked at him, and her eyes went worried and resigned. Her shoulders went down, almost subliminally. "How many of us are we going to lose, sir?" she asked.

He sighed and looked down at his hands. "Probably three or four, counting her."

The silence stretched for a long moment, with no one else on the bridge doing more than breathing. Maybe even holding their breath. Finally, Nehor said, "Understood, sir."

Tovan stood and walked to the command chair. He sat down. From the corner of his eye, he saw Nehor taking his place at the tactical station. He said, "We're not going to be spooked into de-cloaking yet. We're going to wait for the end of the window, and then we're going to come out of cloak and signal the _Comet_ that we could use the help.

"After that," he continued, "I'll have One and Five try to contact the commander or her sister on their Borg channels. If they can't... If we can't... If we can't get a fix on either of them to beam them out..."

Gently, Nehor said, "You know we can't fight a sphere to disable it."

"I know." Fighting Borg was always all-or-nothing. Or you died. He took a breath. "We'll sift the wreckage. Borg can survive a lot."

At Engineering, Veril said, "Does that mean we're giving up if she doesn't check in?"

Tovan replied, "If we can contact or locate the commander, or her sister, then I'm going in. Maybe she'll fight harder to keep a friend from being assimilated than she'd fight to stay out of the Collective herself."

Nehor muttered something under her breath, but Tovan ignored it. The woman was loyal to the Republic, far as he could tell, and loyal to the captain -- but she hadn't seen Ten grow from an uncertain kid into a precocious young officer who, Tovan thought, would've been adopted into the family in a heartbeat if his parents had lived to meet her.

After losing the homeworld, people had to make their own families, with or without ceremonies to grant names. 

And, thinking of people who'd probably want to know what he was planning, Tovan tapped the proper buttons on the command chair's arm.

From the speaker, Satra's voice said, "Sickbay."

"I think you'd better come to the bridge," Tovan said. "The sphere sent us a message, and I don't want you killing me for not showing you before I do something stupid."

"You must not have a concussion, for a change," the doctor said. "On my way."

While Tovan waited, he flicked at the chair's controls until it displayed a timer, counting down the seconds till the window closed. Till he'd have to ask their security-Borg to do something hard. Till he'd have to go stand on that transporter with Ten's spare _lirpa_ in one hand and a pistol ready to draw.

Till he'd have to admit he'd rather go down for a hopeless cause than live to hear Admiral Kererek call him _Commander tr'Khev_.


	12. The Mice in the Walls May Have Fangs

Even liberated Borg rarely sweated. But curled into places that Eight hadn't even known spheres _had_... Ten looked like she'd like to be sweating, with her head tipped back against the wall and her eye closed. A few of her tribble-drones were cuddled around her and on her lap. They weren't cooing much -- just hesitant little trills now and then.

Eight didn't ask what was wrong. What was wrong was intensely clear from her own comm node, as Obisek-Latin-Name-Any-Moment-Now was attempting both different tactics _and_ voice modulations to try to command them back into the Collective. Ten was getting the worst of it; Obisek had _known_ her, if only glancingly, but being addressed by name, with that tone of voice...

Honestly, Eight had sampled pornographic romances that were less hot-and-bothering.

The cajoling shifted to offering leadership of units. Out loud -- and _not_ via the comm channel -- Ten whispered, "Holding out... for old Vulcan names."

Eight reached out and petted one of the tribble-drones. It cooed. Ten opened her eye. "Not sure if that helps or makes it worse," she said.

Eight blinked a few times, considered the feedback the tribble was probably giving, and how much Ten was opening her mind to that feedback, and coughed. "Have you figured out a path to the control node? Because the _Kinaen_ 's expecting us to call any time now."

Ten made an unhappy, tribble-like noise, then rubbed her forehead. "I think we'll fit. We have to get over to a cross-corridor. Full of regeneration chambers, of course. But the door there isn't welded shut. I should have verified the entire path and not just relied on standard layouts."

"Think it's trapped? He couldn't have known we'd beam in exactly where we did, right?"

Ten's eye went unfocused. "Most of the doors into the area have been welded shut. It's like a maze to get to him now -- I don't think it's specifically trapped, so much as lined with drones."

"Can you send me the map?" Eight asked.

"Not sure I trust the texting channel right now."

Eight held up her hand, finger-probes extended.

Ten regarded her thoughtfully, then turned her head to give better access to her eyepiece. "Why not? I've got over a thousand tribbles in my head already..."

"I'm _not_ going to interface with anything but the data-center!" Eight said hastily. " _I_ don't want a thousand tribbles in my head."

Her sister cooed at her, obnoxiously, as Eight slipped her probes into the space between skin and metal just in front of one pointed ear. She carefully dipped into the very upper-most layers of data; actually triggering a unit-merge was all kinds of Bad Idea and Last Resort.

(It would've been easy, though. A mental twist, a pressure, a release... And they would be One and Two of Two, a single entity in two drones, thinking and sharing their thoughts so quickly they might have been one mind. But there were the tribbles to consider...)

The map was a three-dimensional construct, etched into storage _there_. Eight pulled it into her own storage and drew back her hand. Tiny smears of green blood were on her fingertips, and she rubbed them on her black uniform pants. "Got it."

"Felt weird," Ten remarked. She took a breath. "He hasn't gotten to offering old Vulcan names yet. I can ignore this line of temptation. Let's get moving."

Eight nodded and motioned for Ten to lead the way, through ducting and crannies that were emergent properties of Borg ship design, and that only a tribble could've found.

By the time they reached the hallway that could lead them to the command node, they were more than halfway through the window they'd allotted for reporting back. Partly draped over her sister, Eight murmured, "Straight shot to the control room from here?"

Ten nodded. "And he's still there. There'll be one door, but maybe we can run for it and lock it behind us. Then we just have to deal with the drones on _that_ side, rather than waves of everyone." Then she shuddered, as new offerings came through the communication node.

Eight shuddered as well. "I don't think 'you'll get to have your ship as your unit' is going to work, is it?"

" _Hiiiaaaaa,_ " Ten breathed, in a drawn out, extreme _oh no_. "Let's hurry, before they realize that's not going to work even with his voice offering."

" _Ie,_ " Eight agreed, and gave Ten a hand as her sister swung 'round and began climbing down.

When they got to the level of the regeneration chambers, Ten balanced on the edge of one's top. Eight slid down next to her and muttered, "Don't think we'd make up in speed what we'd gain in not being noticed."

"Mm," Ten said, nodding. "Let's start running."

"Let's."

They jumped down, got their balance, and pelted down the corridor. They'd made it halfway to the door before the drones along the walls began moving. They'd made it another quarter-mark when tactical drones began firing at them, and the door was visible now, with only a couple ranks of drones closing in--

_**^We have found you, little spies.^** _

Eight wobbled with the force of the transmission, that somehow had harmonics that were rattling down her bones and deafening her with neural overload. Ten crashed to her knees, momentum carrying her into a faceplant and skid with her eyepiece scraping along the metal floorplates. She gasped, air knocked from her lungs by the fall or the transmission, and scrabbled at the ground.

_**^You will be returned to the Collective.^** _

Shaking her head as if that would help clear it -- it didn't, not one bit -- Eight stood over her sister and aimed her exothermic field back the way they'd come, nailing the center of the hallway and making the drones behind her back off. "Get up, Ten!" she yelled, pulling her sword out and trying to decide if she had enough time to reach down and drag Ten to her feet.

_**^Lower your weapons.^** _

The answer was no, and being surrounded on three sides, with a fire at one's back, was no good tactical position. She swatted at one drone, sliced at another, half-spun and slammed her pommel into yet another's face. Hands grabbed at her back, and she felt pinpricks of nano-probes on her flesh before she turned and slashed those hands away. Alerts flashed in the peripheral vision of her eye-lens, as the Collective's nanites battled with her own modified ones, seeking to subvert and control. Eight fell to her own knees, still flailing the sword to keep a clear space around them for as long as possible.

_**^Resistance is futile.^** _

" _No!_ " Ten shrieked, using Eight's shoulder as a prop to shove herself upright and fling her other hand in an arc around them, spraying a combined energy-nanite wave that stunned the Collective's nanites and attacked them in nearly the same moment.

Eight's own internal defenses were only lightly stunned, and rallied quickly, the alerts fading. Ten grabbed her arm with one hand, hauling her up again, and pointed her kit at the floor. Eight yelped and started scrambling towards the door -- as Ten set the ground on fire all around them.

With drones reeling away from the overheated air of the exothermic field, the sisters dashed by them and dove for the door, dropping and rolling once they were past it, crushing embers from their clothing.

And then there was another wave of drones, already stepping out of their regeneration chambers. Eight dropped a fire-field on the ground in front of them and turned to slam the door in the faces of the ones behind, jamming her finger-probes into the locking mechanisms and subverting them. Then she pulled her pistol and shot a few key points for good measure.

When she turned back, Ten had her pistol out as well, and was shooting at drones; the energy was combining with their integral shields to knock them back.

Eight thought about giving that a try, then holstered the pistol and pulled out her sword again.

Ten swapped her gun to her left hand, and unsheathed her blade with the right.

_**^You will be returned to the Collective.^** _

With a tone worthy of an empress, Ten shouted, "Not by these _rabble_! You want me back? Send someone _worthy_!"

The drones moved in. Ten screeched like an angry tribble and strode to meet them, sword in hand. Eight gave the door a quick glance to make sure it was holding, and went to guard her sister's back.

The countdown timer, at the corner of her eye-lens display, incremented down.


	13. The Voice of the Borg

There were three of them on the transporter pad: Tovan, Satra, and Veril. He'd tried to talk the younger Reman out of it, but she'd only said, _He was a close friend of my father's. Maybe **he'll** hesitate long enough to do some good._

They'd de-cloaked just outside of tractor beam range, sent off a message to the _Comet_ , dropped some mines, and re-cloaked till the _Comet_ decided they might as well join the festivities. Thydel Ell was in the command chair now, for Nehor didn't want the weight on her head of ordering the sphere destroyed with so many of their people on it -- and Teilia had said, flatly, she would be needed in Engineering. (D'Vex had sworn at Tovan and insisted he was _retired_.)

"Ready, sir?" asked the transporter officer.

"As soon as the shields are down enough, do it," Tovan ordered.

And when the bridge gave the signal, green fire surrounded them.

***

The hallway was burning again, keeping away the remaining Borg while Ten stood in front of Eight to try to take the shots from the tactical drones' weapons and let Eight's shields regenerate. Healing nano swirled around her like blue-green fairy lights, glittering fit to rival the greenish flames their kit modules had created. With shaking hands, she attempted to shift the frequencies of her pistol to something the sphere's units hadn't adapted to yet.

"Charged up," Eight panted. "Your turn. When will this section run out of drones?"

Before they could switch places, the tactical drones lowered their arm-weapons, while the other surviving units paused and shuffled to the sides of the hall. Eight shoved herself to her feet and laid her free hand on Ten's shoulder. Ten dropped the pistol, and put her sword away; she needed her left hand to steady the blade into the scabbard, and sliced her glove anyway. Droplets of green blood made invisible patterns on the floor.

At the far end of the hallway, Obisek walked around the corner.

***

The room they beamed into was empty. They'd been aiming for a room like that -- low on Borg signatures, and close to Ten and Eight's signals -- but Tovan was still anxious. He'd have preferred at least a few drones to smack with the _lirpa_ thing so he could be sure there weren't Borg waiting to drop on them.

Satra had her tricorder out immediately. It made little beeps, and she pointed. "That way." She frowned. "This place is full of tribbles."

"We did beam a lot over," Tovan said, looking around for the telltale fur-puffs. He couldn't hear any of them cooing, at least.

"They're in the walls." The doctor shrugged. "Let's go."

"Just a moment," Veril said, packing something explosive against the console in the center of the room. "All right."

Tovan led the way from the room, _lirpa_ held in both hands. The hall outside the room had the regeneration cubicles he'd expected -- but they were entirely empty. The place stank of burned flesh and faintly toxic smoke.

"Nehor is going to gloat if this is a trap," he muttered.

"Oh, it's probably a trap," Satra said.

They turned a corner. They stopped.

"Not a trap for us," Veril said.

In front of them... were Borg. Piles of smoldering ones, many with pieces hacked off. Mobile ones who lined the sides of the hall. A few who had already returned to their regeneration cubicles.

At the far end of the hall, a pair of battered, grubby, slightly scorched women stood. The red-haired Terran held her giant slab of sword. The white-haired Romulan held nothing, and was several steps away from the closed door at that end, despite Eight pulling at her shoulder.

And midway between the sisters and Tovan's group...

The sphere hadn't had time to replace any of Obisek's limbs, apparently, but they'd stripped most of his uniform in order to wrap him in almost vine-shaped metal mesh. It curled around his body, and up over his bald Reman skull. Two Borg tubes of obscure purpose arced from his back to -- as he turned to glance behind him -- his forehead, just above the eyes.

 _ **"You will be assimilated,"**_ the Borg said in unison, with Obisek's voice purring as if this was a great favor. Then he turned away, while the tactical drones and other Borg shifted their attention to Tovan and his group.

Tovan hefted the _lirpa_ while Satra unslung her rifle from her back. Veril lifted her wrist and tapped something into it. There was an explosion, back from the room they'd beamed into.

Oddly, Ten winced and put one hand to her head. From the corners of the ceiling, Tovan heard hissing and tiny chirring. He spared a glance, and noticed bits of white fluff. _Tribbles in the walls?_ he wondered.

Obisek had his left hand out towards the two ex-Borg. _**"Return to us,"**_ he commanded, in unison with every other drone in the hall.

Eight said, "Nuh- _uh_!" Ten said nothing, staring at the Reman Borg with her eye wide and dark.

 _ **"Ten of Thirty,"**_ the Borg purred, and Veril made a little noise in her throat. The Borg continued, _**"Rejoin us."**_

Ten took a step closer, putting her hand over Eight's, where her human sister had hold of her shoulder, and gently pushing the Terran's fingers away.

Then Tovan couldn't pay attention, because the drones were closing in and the first bits of weapons fire were lighting up their shields.


	14. Tribborg Queen

Ten moved Eight's fingers from her arm with a reassuring squeeze that was more than half a lie -- but was enough to fool her sister. Or else Eight thought it wasn't worth arguing about.

Not that Ten could argue coherently anymore. Not with the Voice of the Borg resonating through her ears and communication node both. Not with the tribbles shrilling and cooing in her mind.

They were the only reason she hadn't already run to him, but she wasn't sure that "not having enough concentration to walk" was much improvement.

The drones closed in on her crew. "No," she croaked, reaching for her empty holster. The gun was back on the floor somewhere, and on a useless frequency besides.

"On it!" said Eight, and sprinted past Obisek.

He didn't spare her a shred of attention. His eyes held Ten's.

Normally -- and Ten knew this well herself, from the other side -- a Borg's stare was distant, evaluating, slightly unfocused with half or more of the mind occupied with the Collective's thoughts.

Somehow, Obisek managed a gaze that was both distant and _intensely_ focused.

On her.

His hand was still extended to her, fingers and palms wearing black metal like lacework gloves. She could sense the nano-probes that tipped those not-yet-fully-integrated implants.

_**"Come. We need you."** _

It was a lie. She knew it was a lie. They had _him_ , their Voice, and she was a tiny afterthought in the face of the weapon he had become.

But she so wanted to believe it.

One stumbling step became another, and a third. The fourth had momentum. The fifth put her in his arms.

She felt his hands covering her shoulder-blades, and felt the probes entering the base of her neck; blood-green alerts of hostile nanites scrolled down her eyepiece's view. Her arms were wrapped against his ribs, and she ran her palms along the wreck of his uniform and ridges of the implants-to-be.

Her own probes slid from her wrists and into his neural transceiver, that connected him to the Collective within the sphere.

One of his hands slipped to what might have been a caress of her right cheek and ear, and the probes entered that same spot, between eyepiece and skin, that Eight had used earlier.

It was easy. A mental twist. A pressure. A release. And for a moment the sphere's Collective will pressed upon her. It was an ocean. It was a hunger. It was home. The sphere was in combat with two ships, and one of them as familiar as her own body. The Collective reached for her mind and memories, seeking the codes that would disable that ship or subvert it.

And she opened wide the other connection, to a thousand and a half tribbles, whose unending hunger was almost a match for the Collective's.

 _^Danger!^_ she told the tribbles, linking the concept to the battle that raged outside the sphere. And the tribbles screeched and shrilled and jumped in their only defense: to make enough noise to alarm a predator into fleeing.

The sphere's Collective had no experience with the tribble collective. Ten... _did_. She could feel the sphere pulling away, reeling -- but she had her probes deep into their Voice's transceiver, and now _she_ could broadcast despite all they did to block her out.

Obisek pulled his finger-probes from her, beginning to push her away, and she would have been isolated and desolate if not for the tribble collective that filled the pain in a furry, inane horde of upset and hunger. She tightened her arms and grabbed at the transceiver on his spine...  


...and yanked, with all her Borg-granted strength...  
...and it came loose.

Obisek gave a great gasp and staggered, catching himself briefly on the strut of a regeneration chamber and sliding to one knee. Ten followed him, wrapping her free hand firmly around one of the connection cables that had been implanted in his skull.

She could look around now. Tovan, Satra, and Veril were making short work of the few drones who weren't curled on the floor making tribble noises. Eight stood by them, one hand raised and jaw gaping. The tribbles themselves were in the walls and ceiling, screaming angrily.

"Tovan!" Ten shouted past the wave of Tribble clogging her mind, that she still channeled into the communication transceiver she held. "I've got him! _Get us out of here!_ "

His expression was pure relief and he nearly cut his hand off with his weapon, smacking the communication wristband there.

At the edges of the tribble-screaming at the battle, she could sense images: in particular, the _Comet_ unleashing its own tachyon inversion beam and dragging the sphere's shields down with it.

A sheet of green fire enveloped them. When it cleared, they were in a brig cell. More accurately, Obisek was in the cell, and she was halfway into it, on the line where the forcefield should have been. She fell outside, and the 'field went up.

"Bridge!" she shouted from where she sprawled on the floor. " _Kill that sphere!_ "

And over the intercom came the reply from Thydel of, " _Yes,_ Commander!"

Ten clutched the transceiver to her chest and continued to be the interface that funneled the tribble collective into the sphere's Collective. And somewhere in the tiny, sane corner of her mind that wasn't filled with chirping, cooing, and shrilling... she thought, _Thank you. You are the most terrible drones ever. But you were perfect. Thank you._

She ignored it when Satra and Eight and some others got her onto a stretcher. She ignored the scans and questions. She ignored the lights dimming and the ship rocking as the sphere tried to destroy him.

And in the end, nearly two thousand tiny tribble minds gave their final shrieks as the sphere came apart around them.

Ten blinked away tears and squeezed the transceiver until it came apart like the sphere.

Then she let herself pass out.


	15. Epilogue

"Computer," Tovan asked one of the wall-panels. "Where's the commander?"

The display resolved into a ship map, with a little dot near Sickbay. He watched it a moment, but it wasn't moving either closer or further away. Frowning thoughtfully, he headed for a turbolift.

Various crew walked the hallways, to or from their duties, or just between shifts. Habitually, Tovan eyed the occasional Vulcan Starfleet exchange crew, who generally didn't deign to notice his suspicion. He did, however, raise a hand at the Reman security officer. The other man stopped and lifted a hairless eyebrow.

"You came from Sickbay?" Tovan guessed.

"Yes..."

"How is he?"

The Reman snorted. "Chief and Second Engineers are dancing attendance on him, that's how."

"Ah." Puzzling, maybe? "Good. Thanks. Carry on."

"Sir." The other man nodded and walked off.

Tovan continued on, eventually rounding a corner and... there, at the corner of the hall that led to Sickbay, Ten leaned against the wall and examined the shining decorations on her gloves as if they were of extreme interest. Her eyepiece was on the side closer to him.

He hesitated, then wandered over to lean against the wall next to her. From there, he found they were close enough to hear some of the conversation from Sickbay when the doors were open, but not be seen. He picked out Teilia's voice. Veril's. An appreciative-sounding Obisek, and if Tovan was going to have twitches for months at that sound...

Ten froze in her glove-examination briefly, resuming the motion as Teilia spoke again.

Quietly, Tovan said, "So. You're not in there."

"No," she said, even more softly.

"Thought you would've been."

"Didn't seem right."

"No?"

She shrugged. "Our people've been messing with his for a long time. Wouldn't be polite to intrude."

"You saved his life," Tovan pointed out.

Another shrug. "Probably be upsetting to see more Borg just now."

"Life saved? Upsetting?"

"Borg," she countered, running a thumb along the edge of the glove where it ended at her wrist. "Nobody really likes Borg. Not even most other Borg like Borg, once you get out of the Collective."

"Mm," Tovan grunted. Then said, "Nearly killed me to see you go to him like that."

"Sorry. I had to get to the Collective's transceiver. Backstabbing seemed traditional."

He snorted. "Not usually to save people."

"Stabbed the sphere in the back."

"Suppose so." Tovan'd take her word for it. "He going to remember any of that?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Can always pretend not."

He wished he could see the organic side of her face. "Kind of unfair if you're not going to tell him. 'Bout the only time I could make a proper threat stick is when he's recovering from getting the implants pulled off."

Ten snorted in the back of her throat. "You don't have to threaten everyone I get an infatuation for."

"Sure I do. It's what--" _\--brothers--_ "--friends are for."

She snorted again, then moved her head a little in his direction. Hesitated. Gently smacked his upper arm with the back of one loosely-clenched fist.

He reached over and ruffled her hair out of perfect order. When she turned and batted at him, he slipped his arm behind her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. She made a snuffly noise and leaned into him, hands curled up against his chest while he gave a half-hearted attempt to tidy her hair.

After a while, she muttered "I'm the fvadt'eri commander, y'know."

"Rha, rha?" he said blithely. "And who taught you how to swear like that?"

She thought a moment. "Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight. Twelve was the one who taught Klingon swearing."

He wanted to say something light, like _Learned a lot in there, huh!_ But he had a feeling she'd gotten much closer to that sphere than she wanted to admit. And it'd been creepy when all the tribbles in the walls started screeching.

So he just said, "Kids these days," and ruffled her hair again and pretended he didn't notice when her little ironic laugh turned into choked-off tears.

Maybe only a Borg-sibling would understand everything that she'd done on that sphere. But Tovan could figure out when someone had been through half a Klingon hell, and not even gotten the guy at the end. And Tovan could be someone to cry on, who'd glare at anyone who passed by so they didn't bother the commander.

*****

_*roll credits*_


	16. Citations

<http://www.rihan.org/drupal/dictionary/d>

<http://www.rihan.org/drupal/dictionary/f>

<http://www.rihan.org/drupal/common_words/insults>

<https://quizlet.com/1224761/klingon-curses-and-insults-flash-cards/>

<http://sto.gamepedia.com/Elisa_Flores>

<http://sto.gamepedia.com/Kererek> (Someday I will be able to spell his name correctly from memory. Today is not that day.)

<http://sto.gamepedia.com/Obisek>

<http://sto.gamepedia.com/Rashna>

<http://sto.gamepedia.com/Tovan_Khev> \-- and especially note the link at that page that leads to <http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news/detail/1012280-legacy-of-romulus-dev-blog-%2313>

Satra, D'Vex, and Veril are also standard STO NPCs who can be looked up at sto.gamepedia.com. Konratra is a STO Duty Officer (see <http://sto.gamepedia.com/Specialization:_Conn_Officer/Romulan_Republic/Tactical_Team>; don't play poker with her, because she cheats). Teilia is a Reman Engineering Bridge Officer with a randomly assigned name.

Ten and Eight are, in Star Trek Online, both Science Officers. Ten's Traits include the ability to do an AOE that has some healing, purges various effects (including assimilation nanites), and has a chance to revive knocked-out team-mates. For fic purposes, many of their abilities are assumed to be modifications of their Borg nanites. ...except the Exothermic Induction Fields. That's just MMORPG Treknology and I don't even have good Treknobabble for it. Those things just set stuff on fire. *jazzhands*

(The Risian earthquake generator, plus the exothermic field, really does a number on clumps of enemies, from Vaadwaur to Deferi Borg to Iconians. Add a radiation module to the kit, target the most potent enemy, and watch their companions melt away...)


End file.
